This fine collection of essays offers a much-needed introduction to the historical formation of Dominican society and culture. Penned by several of the most prominent scholars of Dominican history and society, this translation will be very useful for teaching purposes since it offers a sampling of key scholarship that remains unavailable in English. Originally prepared for the national museum, El Museo del Hombre Dominicano, these essays made a splash when first published in 1981, since in highlighting the multicultural formation of Dominican society they challenged the Hispanophilia then dominant in Dominican textbooks. Some of the key features that distinguish the country from its neighbors — the early extinction of the indigenous population, the rise of colonial cattle ranching, and the eighteenth-century development of a freedman majority — resulted in a nation of maximal race mixture, yet one not without diversity, as this elegant volume clearly shows.
The first cluster of...
